Madi gurgled with laughter. She had only met my new friend, Berenice, or Berry, as she liked to be called, a few times, but that was enough for Madi to size her up and agree that Berry was our kind of friend. Paul was Berry’s older brother, and as Madi had said when she met him, he was “Hot as hell and twice as sexy.” He had a girlfriend, though, so that was a bit of a downer, as Madi and I had agreed, but as Madi had also said, “Girlfriends don’t always last.”
‘Maybe Paul undressed you,’ said Madi in a wistful tone. ‘He could undress me anytime. If I wasn’t happily engaged to the love of my life, that is,’ she added hastily. ‘He’s still with his girlfriend, I assume?’
‘Sadly for me, yes. But enough about me. Everything okay with you? This is an early call even by your standards. You usually sleep in on a Sunday.’
Madi and I chatted almost every day, and Madi often called at around eight in the morning, except on a Sunday. Sunday was the one day of the week that she liked to sleep late.
Madi was an early bird and had been for the fifteen years I had known her. I was more of a night owl, although since moving into Middle Cottage, my habits, and my entire life, had changed. These days, I was usually up and about long before the lark had even opened its eyes, let alone started singing.
Not that the tiny hamlet of Midwinter had an abundance of larks. In fact, I had never seen one. Sparrows, magpies, blackbirds, collared doves and, of course, my favourite birds – robins, were plentiful, especially as I had a bird table in my back garden, together with several hanging feeders brimming with seed, suet balls, and so forth.
Swans, geese, ducks, and moorhens were frequent visitors too, often gliding along Midwinter Brook which ran close by the row of three cottages on Midwinter Lane, and was a tributary of Midwinter River. The river was about two miles away and cascaded down one side of Midwinter Ridge, then flowed past Midwinter Farm, before it curved back around the foot of the hills and made its way through Fairlight Glen, a beautiful area of woodland and shrubs. From there the river skirted the town of Fairlight Bay, as it made its way to the sea.
There were partridges, too. Sadly, not in pear trees – which would be lovely at this time of the year – but scurrying across the fields that surrounded the cottages, and weaving in and out ofthe hedgerows that were bursting with winter berries, separating the cottages and the fields.
Sheep and cows grazed in those fields in summer; the grass strewn with wild flowers loved by butterflies, birds, and bees, but this time of year, the cows were in their sheds, and although the sheep remained outside for most of the winter except for when the fields were sodden, or the weather was too grim, they preferred to be closer to the farmhouse down in the valley on the other side of Midwinter Ridge rather than up on the exposed hills.
The hills that formed Midwinter Ridge were also known locally as the fire hills. This was because of the proliferation of wild gorse bushes that grew on the sides of the hills facing the sea. In the spring, when the gorse bushes were covered in a blanket of yellow-gold blooms, the hills gave the appearance of being on fire.
‘All good here, thanks,’ said Madi. ‘And nothing much to report, apart from that the weather’s naff, so I’m going to have a lazy day by the fire. What about you? Got any exciting plans for the day? I just wanted to be the first one to wish you a jolly December. And speaking of jolly, how are the two grinches?’
Madi meant my two neighbours, Adele, and Marcus, who lived in the cottages either side of mine. When I moved into Middle Cottage last December, not only had my neighbours kept themselves to themselves, they hadn’t put up any decorations – at least, none that I could see. Both Madi and I adored Christmas, although me more so than Madi, so the lack of decorations was an afront to our senses and we’d been discussing it ever since.
My boxes of Christmas decorations, of which there were a lot – and I do mean, A LOT – had been the first boxes I had unpacked … after the box labelled ‘kitchen essentials’, that is. That box held my kettle, my matching jars containing coffee, teabags, andsugar, another jar brimming with homemade Christmas cookies, and a cooler bag with a three-litre plastic bottle of milk.
Between making the removal team copious cups of coffee and tea, I began putting up my decorations. The removal men even helped. And they complimented me on my delicious Christmas cookies, too.
Once my boxes were unpacked and I had settled in, I had popped round to each cottage to introduce myself but neither neighbour had given me a warm welcome and neither of them had invited me in. Nor had they given me their names, which Madi said was particularly unfriendly.
‘Perhaps I caught them both at a bad time,’ I had proffered in their defence that day. ‘The woman did say she was on the phone, although she didn’t have one in her hand when she answered the door. The man just said, “No thanks to whatever it is you’re selling”, and closed the door in my face.’
‘Perhaps you did,’ Madi had said, sounding unconvinced. ‘But they didn’t have to be rude.’
I had tried again but neither neighbour had answered their door, and I had posted Christmas cards through their letterboxes the week before Christmas, but hadn’t received cards from them in return.
‘Some people don’t send cards these days,’ I told Madi, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘They give to charity instead.’ I had decided to give my neighbours the benefit of the doubt. I was sure they had probably done that.
Madi, however, was not convinced.
‘I think you’re being kind,’ she said. ‘There aren’t any postal costs involved in dropping a card through a neighbour’s letterbox, so saving that expense doesn’t stack up in my opinion. And buying a pack of charity cards doesn’t cost much, and is also giving money to charity, so that’s a win-win.’
I couldn’t argue with that logic, which made the disappointment greater.
‘I think they might just be unfriendly people,’ Madi said at New Year, when the neighbours hadn’t responded to my invitation to my small, New Year’s Eve party. Madi, together with her fiancé, Tristan, had driven all the way from their relatively new home in Somerset to be there, and was not impressed that the neighbours couldn’t even be bothered to walk down the length of their garden paths.
By Easter, I was beginning to agree with Madi and had almost resigned myself to the fact that the neighbours and I would never be friends – just neighbours. Almost. But I wasn’t quite ready to give up hope, and I’ve always been an optimist.
And then the miracle of spring happened, and it wasn’t just the flowers that burst into life.
One warm May morning, when I was planting flowers in my front garden and I glanced up and spotted Adele watching me from the sitting room of Far Cottage, I smiled and waved and was about to look away when I got the surprise of my life. Adele waved back. Not only that, the woman actually smiled.
As if this was contagious, later that same week, Marcus, who lived in End Cottage, also reciprocated my cheery wave. This time it was me who was looking out of my sitting room window and Marcus was marching up his path towards his front door. For some reason, he glanced towards Middle Cottage, perhaps to admire the new window boxes brimming with fragrant flowers that I had planted, and the pots of varying shapes, sizes and bright colours lining the path to my own front door, and instead of quickly averting his gaze as he usually did, he waved and smiled. It was a quick wave and a brief smile but it filled me with joy and I jumped up and down with delight, and then called Madi to tell her the news.
‘I know it’s hardly big news,’ I had said, ‘but I finally feel as if they’ve accepted me. And maybe, in a couple of years, all three of us might even become friends.’
I was joking of course. I was determined to find out their names by the end of May, and to have held a conversation, however short, with at least one of them, but preferably both, by the end of June.
I had got my wish. The warmer weather had brought both my neighbours out into their gardens and although the fences, bushes and trees in the back gardens were far too tall for any of us to see one another, the hedges dividing the front gardens were only a couple of feet high and I took every opportunity to pop outside and chat if either neighbour ventured out.
